Project assessment technology for software production

In order to improve productivity and quality in software production, the critical importance of technologies for process assessment and project management is becoming widely recognized. The Process Capability Maturity Model developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University and the ISO Standard on Quality Control and Assurance (ISO-9000) are particularly well known in this area. We propose a model of assessment based on the above concepts, as follows. One is the assessment of software quality control activities, addressing organizational attributes. The other addresses the assessment of individual production projects. We were able to confirm the effectiveness of this model by applying them to many projects. However, we also identified problems in their application and the need for measures to improve them. The most important of these include the need for better methods of analyzing the results of the evaluations, and improvements to the constituency of the assessment teams.